


Another One Bites the Dust (aka Crowley goes to war with a roomba)

by aeyria



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Background Aziraphale/Crowley, Canon Compliant, Crack, Gen, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Roombas, Snake Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeyria/pseuds/aeyria
Summary: Crowley decides to get a roomba for the bookshop. It goes about as well as one would expect.(Just utter tomfoolery.)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 281





	Another One Bites the Dust (aka Crowley goes to war with a roomba)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kedreeva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/gifts).



> Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://kedreeva.tumblr.com/post/613036266421977088/has-anyone-written-a-fic-where-crowley-releases-a) by [Kedreeva](https://kedreeva.tumblr.com). I'm out on quarantine for the rest of the semester and well, we can all use a laugh right about now, can't we? Even if it means forgoing work on the several wips I've had going since last summer, and making this my first published work. Whoops. Anyway, hope y'all enjoy! 
> 
> Big thank you to [ShinyHappyGoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyHappyGoth/pseuds/ShinyHappyGoth) for helping me edit, title, and tag this silly piece. You're a star!
> 
> Title obviously from the Queen song of the same name.

It was meant to be a joke, really. 

There was no need for wiles now that the world hadn’t ended, but mischief was fun to make even without a side to report it to, and if the angel had decided that he couldn’t be bothered to look up from his book long enough to notice that dust had started to accumulate, well, Crowley could hardly be blamed for what happened, could he?

He figured he would set it up and give himself some free entertainment while keeping the shop from getting too buried in the stuff, and then when the angel came back to reality they could have a good laugh about it and maybe use it to scare off some customers. Aziraphale would like that, extra pest deterrent. If he ever stopped reading to open up the shop again. 

Another day’s worth of dust settled. Crowley went out and bought a roomba.

He tossed out the instructions as soon as he pried the box open. It seemed like a simple enough machine; he pulled it out, pushed a few buttons, and then, because he’d seen a few videos and thought it a delightful idea, strapped a knife to its top and unleashed it into the wilds of the bookshop. Stabby, he named it, to keep with tradition. The roomba beeped merrily and trundled into the bookshop while Crowley sat back to watch. It traced senseless patterns into the dust, leaving little trails in its wake and plumes in the air as it passed through. The dust was resettling even as it was vacuumed up. He blinked. This would take a while. 

Things fell apart while he was asleep. He hadn’t realize he’d fallen asleep, hadn’t intended to when he’d curled up in the big arm chair next to the window, but apparently he had, and now he was being made very aware of the fact as Aziraphale’s voice burst through the sun induced calm. The angel sounded decidedly unhappy.

“Crowley! You daft serpent, wake up!“

Crowley opened his eyes to two thoughts; first, that the angel was in front of him, shouting and pointing, and apparently upset enough that his halo had popped out; and second, that oh, that wasn’t his halo at all, but the roomba he had bought casually making its way across the ceiling overhead.

“Would you care to explain this?”

“‘S a roomba?” he said. At least, that was the only difference in circumstance that he could detect; the books were still where they should be, nothing was on fire, the angel was still corporeal if his shaking Crowley’s shoulders was anything to go by. The only thing that had changed was the amount of dust.

“Yes I know what it is, what is it doing here? And why is there a knife on it?”

This was not a conversation he wanted to be having while sleep addled and being physically shaken. He shrugged off Aziraphale’s hold on him and hauled himself into a more upright position, letting the world stop jostling before he reassessed the situation. The angel still looked very displeased.

“Look, it’s not my fault you were so caught up in your books that you had bloody dust building up everywhere. I just got something to take care of the cleaning.” Somehow, Aziraphale had the nerve to look offended at that.

“The dust adds character! It deters potential buyers.”

“It‘d deter anyone having to wade through a small ocean of dead particles.” The angel couldn’t argue with that one. He pressed on.

“And the knife?” 

“Don’t look at me. It’s a human thing, that. I just thought it was funny. Did you know it’s got a whole following on the Internet? They make up stories about Stabby the roomba.” He was still quite pleased with that facet of humanity. Aziraphale seemed to disagree. 

“Crowley, there is a reason it’s called Stabby!”

“It wouldn’t dare,” Crowley hissed. He narrowed his eyes to glare at the roomba. Except, where a small dark circled had previously been puttering about on the ceiling, there now was just uninterrupted plaster. Aziraphale slowly followed his gaze.

“Umm...”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, “you’re going to take care of this, right?”

“Er, yes, of course!” It would be easy enough, right? It was one bookshop, how long could a non-sentient robot keep out of reach?

As it turned out, a demonically animated roomba with no regard for gravity or battery life could evade capture for quite a long time if it wanted to. 

The first day Crowley just waited for it to roll back around. On the second, he started trying track it down. The third was spent trying to corner it and set up ambushes. After the fourth day of unsuccessful hunting, Crowley was forced to admit that this would be more difficult than he had thought. 

He’d been so close so many times - it was right around a bookshelf, or just over a couch - but then in the time it would take to get around the precariously stacked books or what have you, the thing would have already disappeared. The few times he’d actually managed to get close enough to try to grab it, it had swiveled around and nicked him with the still firmly attached knife on its back before skating away while he was recovering. 

He hissed as he sucked at the newest line of red welling from his hand. The cuts and injuries the roomba inflicted weren’t deep enough to cause any real physical damage, just enough for him to feel the sting and know it had gotten him. The real damage was to his pride. From somewhere else in the shop, the roomba made some infuriatingly cheery beeps as it disappeared among the stacks. He was convinced it was mocking him. 

By the time Aziraphale finally decided to emerge from his safe haven of a back room where he’d holed himself up, Crowley had begun tactical planning to the tune of guerrilla warfare. He was perched on top of one of the shelves as a snake, eyeing the shop floor as he fed a string through the nearest light fixture when the cautious creak of the door broke the silence, startling him out of his concentration. It was just at this time that a certain armed roomba rounded the top of the shelf, the loud creak from the old hinges hiding the low whirring of the new machinery.

Crowley spun around, intending to warn the angel about the now intricate lattice of tripwires he’d woven across the ground, when he felt a sharp flash of pain erupt between his ventral scales. It hurt, it hurt much more than before, and while he immediately knew that it wasn’t fatal, he also knew that it wasn’t just any little nick either. He recoiled with a hiss, tail lashing out as he tried to get away. The problem was, being a large snake atop an old, narrow bookshelf didn’t leave one with many options for places to go aside from down. His movement jostled the shelf, even weighed down by old tomes as it was, and with very little fanfare aside from an alarmed chirp made by the roomba, Crowley was sent toppling over the side of the shelf and into a tangled heap of coils upon the ground.

Through the dizziness and spinning of his thoughts, Crowley could hear the distant sound of Aziraphale rushing into the room. He wasn’t sure when in the process he reverted to his human form, but at some point he became aware of clutching at his stomach as Aziraphale helped him into a sitting position. He wasn’t so much in pain as he was in shock and disorientation.

“Oh, dear, are you all right? Oh, I told you it was going to get someone hurt. Here, let me—”

The angel did something, and abruptly there was a surge of energy around the wound. It coursed through him, and for the briefest of moments, the holiness of the miracle felt like burning, like swallowing a live coal and burning away from the inside, but before he could fully process it or begin to writhe away, the searing heat simmered down to comforting warmth, and he was left with only a bruised ego to show for it.

“I almost had it you know,” he said, once his tongue had remembered its motions and his vocal cords would make more than sounds composed of all vowels. “You just startled me.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes with a fond, exasperated sigh.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“‘M a demon.”

“Yes, well, it’s a good thing you’re my demon. I certainly wouldn’t be putting up with any other agent of chaos who decided to go around taping knives to cleaning robots and setting them loose in the shop.” 

Crowley felt his face grow red, and not just because of the jab. Fortunately, Aziraphale’s focus had been turned away from the demon as he looked up to the shelf off of which Crowley had fallen.

“On that note—“ The angel pulled away, reaching up to carefully grasp the upturned roomba which had apparently gotten knocked over and stranded upside down in the panic. He pulled it back down into his lap, careful to keep the blade pointed away from him while he settled back down. Crowley felt a stab of jealousy; the roomba had never been so docile when he had tried to handle it. If that were him, it would have been swinging for sure. 

It was almost adding insult to injury then, when Aziraphale snapped his fingers and the knife disappeared. 

“You’re telling me you could have done this the entire time?” he squawked. He looked at the various still healing cuts on his hands and ankles. None of them came close to being deadly, but still. Aziraphale sighed.

“Crowley, we’re both ethereal, you know you could have miracled it away just as easily as I.”

“But—“ Except, there was no but, was there? The angel was telling the truth; Crowley had just just gotten so caught up in it all that he’d forgotten. And Aziraphale had holed himself up and gone along with it. Just enough of a bastard. Crowley relented. 

“Yeah, all right.”

“Good,” Aziraphale said, offering his hand as he stood. “Now, what do you say to a nice bottle of wine while we shake this all off?” Crowley took his hand and hoisted himself up.

“Never heard better. Lead the way, angel.”

He sat himself on the couch in their usual corner while Aziraphale fetched the alcohol. After a week of hunting down errant robots, it was a relief to sit somewhere comfortable without fear of being attacked. He’d almost nodded off when Aziraphale reappeared, holding not only a wine bottle, but the roomba and, more concerning, a new knife that looked alarmingly like the sword Aziraphale had wielded not too long ago. All at once, all of the drowsiness was gone as he watched as Aziraphale set the bottle down and set to fitting this new knife onto the back of the machine. He blinked and bit back a hiss.

“Angel, what the Satan are you doing? I thought we just finished dealing with this mess. You made me chase the bloody thing for a week! If you let that thing loose I am not catching it for you again.”

“Relax dear, no one’s going to get hurt this time.” 

“Easy for you to say,” Crowley muttered. The angel ignored him. 

“I was thinking about what you said,” he continued, “about the humans making up stories for an inanimate object, and, well, you’re right, it is rather endearing. Such genuine love for such a silly thing. And after you went through all the trouble, it feels wrong to just throw it at all away. So, I’ve decided to keep him.”

“Him?!”

“Yes! There seems to be a bit of variation, but a slight majority of the iterations of ‘Stabby’ that I was able to read up on used those pronouns. I’m not entirely sure why, but I suppose that’s humanity for you.” Aziraphale took a moment from taping to test the binding. It held. He nodded in satisfaction as he moved to taping from the opposite direction. 

“Now he can roam the shop safely.”

Crowley looked around for a sign that maybe this was all in his mind and he’d hit his head harder than he’d realized on the way down from the shelf.

“Have you forgotten the fact that you’re currently strapping another bloody knife to the thing?” 

“Oh, do calm down, it’s a retractable blade, see?” Aziraphale pressed a finger against tip to demonstrate. True to his word, the blade retracted into the hilt and sprung back out when he pulled away. He finished his taping and set the roomba on the floor where it began turning in curious circles as it reoriented itself. Crowley took a deep breath.

“Right, I’m going to need a lot of whatever you’ve got there.”

Crowley reached across the table to pour himself a glass. It was perhaps a more generous serving than one ought to start off the night with, but after everything he’d gone through, he figured he’d earned it. Aziraphale took the bottle from him and poured his own drink. The angel lifted his glass.

“To Stabby,” he said, beaming.

“To no longer being stabbed,” Crowley chorused. He tipped his head back to down the wine, and as he closed his eyes, amidst the sound of Aziraphale’s quiet laughter and the bustle of life on the street outside, Crowley heard the familiar cheerful beeps of a successful predator just as the shock of cold, blunt metal pressed none too gently into his ankle.


End file.
